“Ethnomathematics”

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., politics, Worldwreckers, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 062021
 

By the title, you might think that “ethnomathematics” might be a means to count or calculate the number of people in this or that ethnic group. Nope.

Originally it seems to have been the study of how different cultural groups did math or at least understood the concepts of numbers and counting. But recently it has taken a far more sinister turn, and has become the nonsensical notion that mathematics is somehow subject to ethnicity, that this ethnic group has a different set of math than others. That multiplication and division and simple addition are different from one group to another. And that some primitive form of math that struggles to count to ten is somehow relevant in the modern world and that limited educational time and resources should be splurged on teaching kids ineffective, outdated and really rather useless ways of doing math purely to make some people feel good about their mythical past. It is in effect, if not necessarily in intent (though I would not bet against intent), a means by which a population can be rendered incompetent to even *understand* their own technological underpinnings.

 Posted by at 10:20 am

Book 3

 aircraft, Book 3, books, news, projects  No Responses »
Nov 062021
 

So today I signed the contract for my third book. This one will be a little different than the previous two: rather than covering one or two specific aircraft types and their evolution, competitors and derivatives, this one will cover a *category* of aircraft. Details later.

 Posted by at 1:47 am

Sometimes you don’t need special effects

 AARRRGH, art, awesomeness, wisdom, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 052021
 

Sometimes you just need a good actor. And if what you’re shooting for is “holy frak that’s creepy,” a good actor who is literally dying at the time of filming can be incredibly effective. Such as Julian beck here in “Poltergeist 2.” Thirty years ago this bugged the bejeebers out of me, and it *still* works.

Nope.

Nope.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPE.

 Posted by at 8:43 am

LoRa comms: what am I missing?

 awesomeness, Hmm..., youtube  No Responses »
Nov 052021
 

I recently stumbled across some vids on youTube showing something I didn’t know I needed: networked radio communications that don’t need cell networks or subscriptions. They seem to be basically dinky encrypted radios used for text messaging. These would be handy in the event that cell networks go down or get mangled or overloaded, or for communicating where cell networks simply aren’t available. They look like snazzy devices… and for the life of me I can’t seem to actually find commercial version of them, only hand-made units. These things seem like they’d be popular as hell; the cost of parts seems to be well under $50 so you’d think a proper manufacturer could sell them for a hundred bucks a pop and make a fortune. So… where are they?

 Posted by at 12:55 am

Well, Durr….

 awesomeness, Hmm..., humor, news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 042021
 

Hidden behind the news of Virginia’s election of governor flipping the office from D to R is an election in New Jersey, where a truck driver defeated the State Senate President. Since the new State Senator Edward Durr has the Wrong Politics, his social media postings have been scrutinized to find all the horrible, horrible things this man said during the years when he was just some blue collar guy that nobody in the media paid the slightest bit of attention to:

Newly elected GOP state senator’s social media accounts contain xenophobic, anti-Muslim posts

The first posting they quote is a tweet from 2019, where he refers to a particular religion as “false” and its founder as a “pedo.” Uh-huh. So… is it wrong to declare *any* religion as “false?” If I am, say, an atheist who believes actively in the actual non-existence of any and all gods, to me *every* religion that teaches that gods exist is false. If I am a theist who believes one specific god exists but others do not, another religion that teaches that *my* god doesn’t exist but theirs does is false. Durr may or may not be factually right or wrong to claim that any particular religion is “false,” but he’s not morally or ethically wrong to do so, no more so than if he had said “my religion is true.” And if the founder of a religion is described in his own official hagiographies as have boinked a 9-year-old… how is he *not* a pedo?

And multiple posts from his Facebook account downplayed the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — one called it “not an insurrection … (but) an unauthorized entry by undocumented federal employers!”

And… hmm. “Undocumented federal employers” is a dandy description of taxpayers.

 

And speaking of the elections…

 Posted by at 6:33 pm

Ah, hell. 25 years of “Trials and Tribble-ations.”

 AARRRGH, art, awesomeness, blather, history, science fiction, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 042021
 

One of the best episodes of any of the Trek series aired 25 years ago today.

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGH.

On one hand: crap, I’m ooooooold. On the other hand: this episode, which saw Our Heroes from Deep Space Nine sent back in time to the original series “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode and seamlessly slotted in using CGI tricks and well constructed sets, props and costumes, showed that the original series designs worked *perfectly* well in an era of higher resolution. And when Star Trek: Enterprise did it itself some years later, with even higher visual resolution, that cemented the fact that the Nu Trek eras determination to redesign everything was just ridiculous and, let’s face it, ugly.

Nothing STD or STP has produced has improved on this:

 

As a bonus: in order to produce footage that the new characters could be inserted into, vintage Trek footage was remastered digitally. The end result was so good that it help to assure that a complete remaster of the original series was created and released on Blu Ray.

 Posted by at 5:53 pm
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